Toronto and Niagara Falls

Apparently Toronto has its own Spider-man, in the form of a guy who dresses in a Spider-man suit, constructs webs around buildings and hitches rides from passing buses on his skateboard. Sadly, we did not run into him on our wanderings through the Distillery District the next day, though we did see some cool artists' shops, sculptures decorated with flowers, a gigantic design store with most things one might want around the house, good coffee at a cafe with an old map of Sydney on the wall, a key lime pie truffle from a chocolate factory shop and delicious cocktails at a distillery in a beautifully restored brick building decorated with the botanicals they use in their spirits. I got some star earrings, after deciding against the ones with a saber tooth kitten paired with a bloody amputated finger, and B-Ball Bro and I had some amazing gourmet cheese toasties in one of the grocer stores.

Back at the apartment, we had Taco Tuesdays with some friends of B-Ball Bro and Fab Fabric Gal (including a very small friend who was very cute and well-behaved and slept most of the time), plus donuts, which were pretty good.

On Wednesday I got up early and took a car downtown to catch my Niagara Falls bus at 8.10am. I arrived a bit early, and joined a girl from Brisbane in search of coffee, both finding that 'black coffee' apparently meant 'coffee with milk please’ (maybe it was our accents). The tour group wasn't too large, so we had a smallish bus a bit like a yellow school bus. The tour wasn't just to Niagara Falls - we stopped at Niagara-on-the-Lake, a pretty old town where I got a hot apple cider and wandered the streets looking in the shop windows, and at the smallest chapel in the world, which seats about nine people. We also did a wine tasting at a vineyard where they make ice wine, which comes from frozen grapes harvested in the middle of the night, needs four thousand grapes to make a single bottle and is very sweet and flavourful.

After a stop at the flower clock and the hydropower plant (they divert water from the river into holding pools and use those to run the turbines, so the falls aren’t affected too much) we reached Niagara Falls. As expected, they are very large.

You could spend a few days at Niagara - there's a lot to do, including what looked like an indoor water park. We took the funicular down to the Hornblower boat first, getting a good view of all the people climbing down the cliff face on the American side of the river beside the American falls, which are wide and roaring and rocky at the bottom. The spray began to hit us, and the red ponchos they give you came in useful (the people on the American side appear to get blue ponchos, I guess in case anyone tries to make a break for it across the river). I had my usual trouble trying to figure out what I should be taking photos with (phone or camera or 360?) plus how I would keep them dry, but managed not to get anything water-damaged.

We sailed past the American falls and approached the Horseshoe falls, the ones you always think of when you think of Niagara Falls. The amount of water pouring over is staggering, and the spray is so dense at the centre that you can't see anything but a pale swirling column of mist. At times, when the wind swept over us, it felt like we were in the middle of a tropical rain storm (though... it was a little cold for that...). The boat heaved some in the whirling water, so you had to be steady on your feet as the Falls surrounded us.

Back on dry land, we walked along the cliff edge towards the Falls, stopping to take pictures of people zip lining past, and admiring the beautiful tulips on the right side of the path (no one was looking much at them, considering the awesome-in-the-original-sense sight on the left side). We weren't sure if we'd have enough time to go down into the tunnels behind the waterfall, but we made it with time to spare, bought our tickets and descended in the elevator, armed with fresh yellow ponchos.

You can walk right out beside the falls, about halfway down, with the water pouring only a few metres from the rust-pitted railing, and you can also take some bunker-like tunnels through the rock, with the sound of the water pounding all around you and the rock reverberating beneath your feet.i had to remind myself a few times that these tunnels had been here Quite A While, and they were not likely to fall in anytime soon or be inundated but the water, which was too busy falling into the mist pool below. At the end of the tunnels are two openings out into the water, which rushes past in a twisting, roaring white sheet. Incredible how much water is going past.

We attempted to dry our shoes off with the hand dryer in the bathroom, then took a few more photos just at the cusp of the falls, where you can see greeny-blue daylight through the water just as it tips over the edge. Then we had to hotfoot it back to the bus, which was actually quite good because it warmed us up.

The next day I walked with B-Ball Bro into Kensington Market, which is a few blocks of protected houses and shops where all the businesses have to be independent, not chains. There's incredible street art everywhere, monsters made of car parts in overgrown gardens, houses painted like the night sky with stars, and lots of little quirky shops. We met Fab Fabric Gal for coffee and wandered a little, got some pastry from the bakery before B-Ball Bro had to go for work, and checked out some of the quirky shops. We had some huge First Nations tacos for lunch (along with some really good so-new-it-didn't-have-labels soda) and then I went to take pictures of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Museum of Ontario, before getting the subway up to Casa Loma, which was my main destination for the afternoon.

Casa Loma is basically a castle that a businessman built in the early twentieth century because he wanted a castle, and you have probably seen it in films such as Xmen or TV. The businessman played a large role in developing hydro power and connecting up Toronto's street lights (endeavours he was knighted for), but things went south in the twenties when a few investments went bad and the City decided to increase the taxes on his property from about $6000 per year to about $120,000 per year. In the end, the City took possession of the castle. In the forties, it was used as a secret facility for assembling sonar for WWII while also playing host to parties and dinners for unkonowing guests.

There are a LOT of rooms, including a huge conservatory with a stained glass dome, secret passageways down to a vault, about fifty telephones, and two towers. There's also a long tunnel under the road, because the businessman had properties on either side of the road and the City wouldn't let him buy the road. Unfortunately I only got halfway through the tunnel before I had to turn back, because I’d spent too long looking around the rest of the amazing place and it was time to close.

In the evening, Fab Fabric Gal amd I went to the Harry Potter bar, and after much deliberation (some of their drinks involve fire) settled on the butterbeer, which came with toasted marshmallows and whipped cream, and was pretty good. There was a family beside us dressed entirely in robes and wigs and witches' hat, which was very impressive. The Toronto basketball team was playing an NBA final that night, so after our butterbeer we joined B-Ball Bro and flatmate the Irish Timetraveller in the secret back courtyard of a bar, open to the stars, and cheered them on to win against Oakland in a very close game.

And then it was my last morning in Toronto, and I was saying goodbye to everyone, getting a car into the city and then taking the world,s shortest ferry ride to the airport, trying poutine (I think... I will not try it again?) and getting on the plane for my next adventure.

New York to Toronto

And now it's Sunday! I'm sitting in a cafe bookshop somewhere near Broadway (which is, of course, a very long road), having had breakfast and coffee with my student housing roommate in DUMBO (‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass'), then venturing back into Manhattan. I can report the restrooms at Bryant Park are Really Nice, Much Recommended, and now my plan is to visit the Natural History Museum and check out Hudson Yards.

***

After a successful subway expedition, I came out into the dazzling sunlight, heat beating down so much I regretted bringing my jacket. There was a long line to get through security and into the museum, and I almost decided I'd walk around Central Park instead, but decided that the museum's air conditioning (and exhibits) would be worth the wait.

The Natural History Museum is the one in the movie Night at the Museum, and there are definitely a lot of animal exhibits that look like they could come to life. I passed these and headed for the Human Origins area, which has displays of homo ergaster and homo erectus, homo neanderthalensis and homo floresiensis (aka hobbits). They also have a room next door with displays of meteors (with one massive one in the centre of the room) that would have to fulfil the 'space' part of my visit, because there is far too much to see and (unfortunately) they won't let you stay the night (the space section did look amazing, though, inside a massive sort-of floating white sphere inside a storeys-high hall). I checked out the Native American halls and the Margaret Mead Pacific Peoples exhibit, then made for the dinosaurs in my remaining forty-five minutes.

The dinosaurs did not disappoint. The head of an enormous not-a-brontosaurus-but-you-know-what-I-mean stares down at you as you enter the galleries, and you pass under it and around, coming across pterosaurs, T-rexes, triceratops and dinosaur eggs (amongst a lot of other things). Then you come to the early mammals, the mammoths (huge) and then the museum was closing.

Outside, it was pouring with rain. I figured out the secret way to the subway in the bowels of the building, and managed to make my way to Hudson Yards without getting wet - though then I had to dash through the now-half-hearted spitting to get to the huge Vessel sculpture, which is a ten-ish-storey high bronze lattice of staircases. They'd closed it during the rain, so I stared up at it for a bit before taking shelter in the mall beside it. This area is quite near the Hudson River, with views over it, and has only just opened to the public so some parts of the mall were still to open. One wall on the first floor was covered in two-way flipping sequins (which seems to be everywhere - cushions, diaries, handbags, clothes) that people were drawing and writing in.

The rain cleared, but you had to get a ticket to climb the Vessel and it was getting late, so I took some photos of it and headed back to my room in Brooklyn.

I was flying out of Newark Airport in the morning, so after saying goodbye to my room and roommate I took the subway to Penn Station, got myself a ticket by New Jersey transit and sat next to a woman who wasn't sure she had enough time to get to her flight. When we reached the airtrain (a futuristic sixties monorail) she dashed off to try to make it with forty minutes to spare - hopefully she did.

The airtrain gives you some great views of Manhattan as it takes you (no driver) around the futuristic sixties terminals. My plane to Toronto was a small four-seats-across turboprop aeroplane, which apparently have much better fuel efficiency than jets. There were even free snacks and drinks onboard, which I was impressed with, given the norm of air travel in the States as well as the norm of budget airlines. We landed on the Toronto Islands about an hour and a half later, and I walked through the tunnel to the mainland (I had been worried there would be an expensive ferry ride, but no, the ferry is free and is apparently the shortest ferry ride in the world at two minutes, and if you don't want to take the ferry you can walk).

B-Ball-Bro was waiting for me at the other end of the tunnel, and we walked into the city a little (this is an airport you can WALK TO THE CITY from), had a nice coffee and some lunch at a new shipping-container boutique development and caught a car back to B-Ball-Bro's apartment in Little Italy. Toronto (at least, the parts I saw) is a mix of very new condominium apartment buildings, all mirrored glass and chain stores at street level, and fine-grained old semi-detached houses, walkable streets with trams, parks (one had an outdoor ice hockey rink) and interesting little shops and restaurants. When Fab Fabric Gal got home from fabricking school, we took a walk around the neighbourhood and checked out the local wine and cheese scene, which is pretty good, saw SQUIRRELS and browsed some cool little shops. I decided I quite like Toronto.

Raccoons visited in the night, I think, though I did not see them :(

Book #3: Canada

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Yes, I know, the protagonist is thirteen so this isn’t really YA, but let’s just ignore that.

A boy. A hatchet. Alone in the Canadian forest. It’s about as high concept as you can get. I think all of us, no matter whether we live in a fifty-second floor New York apartment or the jungles of Borneo, can relate to this: the struggle to survive against a Nature that doesn’t care whether we live or die.

Brian must figure out how to survive on his own, and hope that rescue comes soon. He’s up against mosquitoes and bears and poisonous berries as well as thoughts of his parents’ divorce. Everything’s distilled out here into life and death, good and bad choices. What seems important in the world of people is insignificant.

It’s amazing how the entire story can be carried by one character alone in the forest. We get flashbacks, and a brief cameo of the pilot at the beginning, but for the vast majority of the book it’s Brian on his own in the wilderness. It scares me to think of writing a book with only one character carrying all the action. It’s almost like that guy who wrote a book without the letter ‘e’.

But it works. You’re riveted until the final page, and then you go back for more in the sequels. I love that Paulsen wrote Hatchet: Winter, playing with the fluidity of storytelling by changing the ending and making room for an entire alternate-reality book. It’s the same kind of idea as a lot of fanfiction, but more awesome because it’s actually written by the author.

I think the book also catches onto you because it’s about a kid taking control of their life. When I was a kid, I spent hours making secret huts and imagining living in piles of driftwood on the beach. Brian perfects his shelter and actually lives in it, something I could only dream of as a hideaway architect.

I’m not sure I want to be stranded in the middle of the Canadian forest after reading this book, but at least I know to have a hatchet with me at all times.

I wonder if airport security would let me.

Any Canadian books you like?